All design concerns are overshadowed by the lack of programming skills of the average VB programmer. I did a project many years ago (10+) where I after a week of fixing bugs declared that it would be quicker to rewrite the whole program from scratch than fixing up th VB program. It took three weeks to rewrite it in Delphi, if I remember correctly.

It takes a VB coder to know one - this is where I started programm . . . er . . . munging data as part of my pit geologist duties in a mine.

So many things I've since learned NOT to do are just par for the course in VB and especially VBA code (inside Excel spreadsheets). Copy and paste huge blocks of code - no problem. Declare constants instead of using magic numbers, why bother?

It's not so much the language as the culture (although there are design decisions even a mother could not love or defend). I remember the first VB book I bought at the outset of the dot com boom - the author went on a feel good rant about how VB programmers like to *GET THINGS DONE* - man, what a crock.

Taking a C course online almost killed me, but it broke some of those awful habits.

Can we just forget this whole VB thing ever happened? (NO, BECAUSE THERE'S A BAZILLION LINES OF VB CODE OUT THERE running mission critical systems). Like I said before, Mr. Lott, if you live long enough you'll own the yacht in the picture on your homepage yet (maybe 2!).

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About Me

Steven F. Lott is a consultant, teacher, author and software developer with over 35 years of experience building software of every kind, from specialized control systems for military hardware to large data warehouses to web service API's.